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e-Science

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E-Science (or eScience) is computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments, or science that uses immense data sets that require grid computing; the term sometimes includes technologies that enable distributed collaboration, such as the Access Grid. The term was created by John Taylor, the Director General of the United Kingdom's Office of Science and Technology in 1999 and was used to describe a large funding initiative starting in November 2000. Examples of the kind of science include social simulations, particle physics, earth sciences and bio-informatics. Particle physics has a particularly well developed e-Science infrastructure due to their need for adequate computing facilities for the analysis of results and storage of data originating from the CERN Large Hadron Collider, which started taking data in 2008.

Characteristics and examples of e-Science

Due to the complexity of the software and the backend infrastructural requirements, e-Science projects usually involve large teams managed and developed by research laboratories, large universities or governments. Currently there is a large focus in e-Science in the United Kingdom, where the UK e-Science programme provides significant funding.

Development of e-Science is also advanced in Europe where the development of computing capabilities to support the CERN Large Hadron Collider has led to the development of e-Science and Grid infrastructures which are also used by other disciplines.

The UK e-Science programme

The UK e-Science programme comprises a wide range of resources, centres and people including the National e-Science Centre (NeSC) which is managed by the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, with facilities in both cities.

Within the UK there are various regional e-Science centres, which support their local universities and projects, including:

There are also various centres of excellence and research centres which have a strong impact on e-Science.

In addition, the EPSRC funded 11 large key pilot e-Science projects in three phases

  • First Phase (2001-2005) were CombEchem, DAME, Discovery Net, GEODISE, myGrid and RealityGrid.
  • Second phase (2004-2008) were GOLD and Integrative biology
  • Third phase (2005-2010) were PMSEG (MESSAGE), CARMEN and NanoCMOS

To support e-Science applications, Open Science Grid seamlessly combines interfaces to more than 100 nation-wide clusters, 50 interfaces to geographically distributed storage caches, and 8 campus grids (Purdue, Wisconsin-Madison, Clemson, Nebraska-Lincoln, FermiGrid at FNAL, SUNY-Buffalo, and Oklahoma in the United States; and UNESP in Brazil). Areas of science benefiting from Open Science Grid include:

  • Astrophysics, Gravitational Physics, High-energy Physics, Neutrino Physics, and Nuclear Physics.
  • Structural Biology, Computational Biology, Genomics, Proteomics, and Medicine.
  • Molecular Dynamics, Materials Science and Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, and Nanotechnology.

The US projects

US-based initiatives, where the term cyberinfrastructure is typically used to define e-Science projects, are primarily funded by the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy (in particular the Office of Science).

NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure, for example, supports the TeraGrid project which provides integrated resources and services operated by some of the nation's supercomputing centers including:

and partner high-performance computing centers at:

The Department of Energy supports e-Science through high performance computing and other initiatives involving its laboratories, including, among others:

Together, the Department of Energy (Office of Science SciDAC-2 program from the High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics and Advanced Software and Computing Research programs) and NSF (Math and Physical Sciences, Office of CyberInfrastructure and Office of International Science and Engineering Directorates) support the Open Science Grid which is a consortium of more than 80 member institutions and alliances. Among its members are:

See also

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